(1863) The Church of the Company of Jesus Fire | Santiago, Chile - video Dailymotion

Vivi Spinel

Disaster Transbian episode 5

Transcript

00:00Are you ready to tell him that?

00:02The Church of the Society Fire

00:32December 8th, 1863

00:34Is the largest fire ever to have affected the city of Santiago, Chile

00:39Between 2,000 and 3,000 people died

00:44Probably the largest number of people to die in an accidental fire in any one building in the world

00:50And even one of the worst building fires of a religious building

00:54Iglesia de la Campania de Jesús

00:57The Church of the Society of Jesus

01:00Was a Jesuit church located in downtown Santiago

01:03The day of the fire was the celebration of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

01:08One of the most popular festivities of the religious calendar

01:11And the temple was adorned with the profusion of candles, oil lamps, and wall coverings

01:17In the main altar, a large statue of the Virgin Mary stood over a half-moon

01:23That in itself was a huge candelabra

01:26That night, the fire started a few minutes before 7pm

01:31When an oil lamp at the top of the main altar ignited some of the veils that adorned the walls

01:37Some early accounts blamed a gas lamp

01:40As people tried to make sense of the shocking tragedy amid old and new technology

01:46But the church was not equipped with gas

01:48The error, like the news itself, was copied by newspapers as far away as Australia

01:54By a flawed design, the church of Campania had doors that swung inward

02:00This wind knocked a candle off the podium

02:03And disrupted the meeting of worshippers

02:05The fire, started by the burning candle, roared through the church

02:10Which resulted in the church's destruction

02:13Somebody tried to put it out by smothering it with another cloth

02:17But managed only to make the fire jump over the rest of the veils

02:22And from there, onto the wood roof

02:24The mostly women attendees panicked and tried to escape

02:28But the side doors had been closed in order to leave space to accommodate more people

02:34They could be opened only inwards

02:36Leaving the main entrance as the primary escape route for most occupants in the church

02:42Men were seated separately from women

02:45With an iron grating between them

02:47And most of the men quickly escaped

02:50Many of them returning to the burning church to try to rescue those still trapped

02:55The priests retreated into the sacristy

02:58And some of the men made their escape by following them

03:02The priests were gathering together the valuables of the church to save them

03:06And they closed the door to the sacristy

03:09So they could do this in peace

03:11No one escaped through the sacristy after the door was closed

03:15The priests then left the scene, all unharmed

03:19With what valuables they were able to save from the blaze

03:23The main door became jammed with a pile of approximately 200 women and children

03:28Which made it impassable

03:30Eventually the side doors were also opened

03:33But they also became jammed

03:36Rescuers were able to pull about 50 people from these heaps

03:39But no more

03:40Upon being notified of the tragedy

03:43U.S. envoy to Chile

03:45Thomas H. Nelson rushed to the scene and assisted in rescue operations

03:50Several days after the fire

03:52Nelson was recognized as a true hero of Chile

03:56The big hoop skirts worn at the time

03:59Made escape very difficult, if not impossible

04:03Causing the people at the front to fall down and be trampled by the ones behind

04:08Very soon the main entrance was blocked by a human wall of bodies

04:13Impeding both the exit of the ones trapped inside

04:16And entry of rescuers

04:18The main tower of the church was built of wood

04:21While the rest of the church was solid masonry

04:24And finally collapsed inwards around 10 p.m.

04:27Putting an end to the few remaining survivors

04:30Between 2,000 and 3,000 people perished in the fire

04:36In a city at the time that had about 100,000 inhabitants

04:40Entire families were wiped out

04:42The cleanup of the bodies took about 10 days

04:46And since most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition

04:49They were placed in a mass grave at the Cemetery General de Santiago

04:54A Santiago newspaper printed the names of over 2,000 known victims

05:00And the same paper also printed a list of the objects saved by the priests

05:05And their value

05:06Which led to public outcry against the priests

05:09Who had saved valuable objects but not people

05:13Already under fire for designing a celebration mass

05:16With thousands of candles and oil lamps

05:18Surrounded by flammable cloths and decorations

05:21Ugarte and his colleagues drew more criticism

05:24When they later explained the deaths of so many women and girls

05:28As the Virgin Mary needing to take them without delay to her bosom

05:33The remaining walls of the church were torn down

05:36And a garden was planted in its place

05:38But the statue placed at the site where the main altar used to be

05:42A few years later

05:43A second statue replaced the first

05:46The garden and the statue still exist

05:48The second statue is now part of the ex-Congresso Naciano Gardens

05:52The original statue is located at the main entrance of the Cemetery General de Santiago

05:58The church bells were sold for scrap and recovered

06:01One of the bells was melted down to cast two new bells for the new Jesuit church in Santiago

06:08Four made their way to Mumbles, Wales

06:10Where they were used to call people to worship

06:13Until they were returned to Santiago in 2010

06:17Two of the returned bells now hang next to the statue

06:20In the ex-Congresso Naciano Gardens

06:22One in the courtyard of the Cartel General de Bomberos

06:26And one at the 14th Fire Company Firehouse in Providencia

06:30One bell stayed in Santiago where it was hung in the Hermita de Santa Lucia

06:35On the Santa Lucia Hill in 1872 through 73

06:40The dent from where it fell marking it as a memorial

06:43The tragedy and the fact that one of the contributing factors

06:46Was the lack of an organized fire brigade

06:49Motivated Jose Luis Claro y Cruz

06:52To organize the first volunteer firemen's corps in Santiago

06:56On December 20th of the same year

06:59Fire brigades in Chile, even today, are still made up only of unpaid volunteers

07:05New fire regulations also resulted

07:08And the tragedy contributed to the partial secularization of Chilean government over the next two decades

07:15Workers excavated for a new line of the Santiago Metro

07:19Uncovered an unexpected length of the eastern foundation of the church in November 2013

07:25Some Santiagoinos are trying to have the foundation preserved as a memorial

(1863) The Church of the Company of Jesus Fire | Santiago, Chile

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